Palin aide discussed 'confidential' help with 'Game Change' film

A former Sarah Palin aide who was part of an effort this week to discredit the “ Game Change” film last year told the screenwriter in an email that he could “confidentially consult” on the movie and suggested a “formal agreement” for his help, POLITICO has learned.

The revelation came a day after Palin senior adviser Jason Recher, along with a group of other onetime staffers to the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, held a conference call to denounce the movie version of the campaign retrospective by reporters John Heilemann and Mark Halperin.

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Recher, who was a senior adviser on the Palin ’08 campaign, told reporters on the call that the depiction of the former Alaska governor in the HBO movie, which has not yet been released, is false.

Recher insisted that, based on the trailer and accounts about the movie, the film paints Palin negatively and claimed screenwriter Danny Strong had prevented him from fact-checking it.

Recher alleged on the call that Strong had asked him early on in the process of writing the script whether the book was an accurate account.

“I told him absolutely, unequivocally, it was not,” Recher said on the conference call for selected reporters, which was conducted with six other former Palin hands. He claimed Strong said he would show him the script but when Recher called after seeing the trailer to collect on that offer, Strong said HBO wouldn’t let him.

Strong denied to POLITICO that account of the conversations.

“I asked him if ‘Game Change’ was based on a false narrative and he said, ‘No,’” Strong said. He added, “I never promised to show him the script and I never promised to show anyone the script.”

Sources familiar with the discussions between Recher and Strong said the screenwriter reached out to the Palin aide when he started working on the script last January and found Recher “very open to talking,” in part because he was a fan of the HBO movie “Recount.”

The sources said Recher told Strong there are also a lot of positive stories about Palin that exist that had been overshadowed by the negative ones.

At the time, Recher had already parted ways with the former governor’s political action committee — on good terms, according to Palin’s team at the time, and he later rejoined her staff.

They spoke by phone after Strong reached out over email and, following that conversation, Recher emailed the screenwriter to continue to the conversation, according to a copy of the email obtained by POLITICO.